A STORY OF THE RISE OF AN EVOLUTIONARY WOMAN

Barbara Marx Hubbard is an Evolutionary Woman. She has offered and developed the new worldview of Conscious Evolution as the fundamental context for the next stage of human evolution. She has written eight books and 195 volumes of Journal begun in 1948 to be communicated over Deepak Chopras ISHAR, a new communication system and archive for evolutionaries. She founded and led the Foundation for Conscious Evolution since 1993 and is the co-chair of the Center for Integral Wisdom, cofounder of the Association for Global New Thought and the World Future Society, a member of Evolutionary Leaders Group, the Club of Budapest and more.

Evolutionary Women fall in love attracted by shared purpose to fulfill their greater destiny.

In 1951, Barbara married artist Earl Hubbard. They met in a small caf on the left bank in Paris in 1948 where she was on her Junior Year abroad from Bryn Mawr College.

Earl came in, a handsome American, and sat opposite her at the little wooden table. The chestnuts roasted in the fire. The November day was cold. She had been trying to be an existentialist, to believe there was no deeper meaning but what she gave it. She wore her beret, smoked Gaulois and had half a bottle of red wine for lunch. She was depressed. Soon she gained her courage, smiled, offered him some of her wine and asked him her fundamental life question: What do you think is the meaning of all our new scientific, technological, industrial power that is good?

He amazed her by saying, I am an artist seeking a new image of man commensurate with our powers to shape the future.

He told her that when a culture loses its story, it loses its greatness. We lost our grand narrative. We could no longer believe in the Renaissance story of progress after the two world wars, the holocaust, and the loss of millions of lives. At that time in Paris the worldviews were existentialism, nihilism, absurdism, materialism. No one at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques where she was in school had any hope, yet she was innately hopeful. But about what? That was her question.

Earl enthralled her. He told her it was up to the artist to help humanity find its new story. As he spoke it flashed through her mind, Im going to marry you. And she did!

They married in 1951 in New York City and had five children. She wrote and edited several books with Earl, including The Search Is On, in deep morning breakfast dialogues as they sought to understand the next step in human evolution as a cultural humanity now being born into the Earth/space environment.

Gradually, she realized that something profound was missing in her life. She loved her husband, her children and was following all the requirements of the 1951 women: Get married, have as many children as possible and care for your husband and home. She did it all with love, yet she became deeply depressed, feeling she was literally turning into stone.

Inspired by the great American dream that we are seeking life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, she set out to discover who was happy in Lakeville, Connecticut. To her dismay, she found a sort of mildew of depression coating the comfortable lives of this exurban community. Something was missing. What was it?

During the 1960s she found the answer through Abraham H. Maslows Toward a Psychology of Being. As a psychiatrist studying wellness rather than illness, he discovered that all Self Actualizing happy, beneficent people had one thing in common: Chosen work they found intrinsically self rewarding and of service.

He advised everyone to Be bold. Do what attracts you.

What attracted her was Dr. Maslow, so she was bold, called him up, asked him for lunch, and he came!

That was the beginning of her emergence as an Evolutionary Woman. It happens when the woman learns that her depression is a signal for something more to be expressed, and learns to say YES to the impulse of attraction within her. The something more begins to be revealed.

At the lunch, Dr. Maslow gave her a list of 300 people, his Eupsychian Network of Good Souls, that he had collected over a lifetime. Many of them became founders of the human potential movement. Her YES had brought her in touch with the newly emerging network of evolutionary transformation.

She returned from the New York luncheon determined to transform her life with this precious list. She wrote a letter to all three hundred people, asking them what they thought was The Next Step for the Future Good. She offered to publish their key responses in the Center Letter, which she created herself.

In the early 1960s she read Teilhard de Chardins The Phenomenon of Man. She was thrilled to discover evolution has a purpose. For billions of years it has been moving from single cell, to multi-cell, to animal, to human and now to us. The inner drive, the consciousness force, the divine in nature had a direction toward higher consciousness, purpose and more complex of synergistic order. The epiphany was the amazing realization that the direction of evolution and her own are one.

The Evolutionary Woman gains a new identity. She is the universe in person. Her passion to grow, to love more, be more, create more is the Eros of the Universe itself animating her.

Teilhard intuited the next stage of evolution. Before the Internet, he declared that the noosphere, the thinking layer of Earth would one day get its collective eyes. When enough love and creativity entered that field of the planetary nervous system, (now growing rapidly through internet, Facebook , Twitter, etc.), people would be changed, not one by one, but all at once. He called it the Christification of the Earth.

Barbara was deeply excited. In some intuitive way she realized that it was her mission to help the noosphere get its collective eyes and to help the nervous system of the planet to be filled with innovation and love. She realized it was like the nervous system of a new born baby, about to wake up a new planetary consciousness. A vocation of destiny was born. She yearned to become a communicator of evolutionary potential.

Evolutionary Women are animated by a unique expression of the Impulse of Evolution as their own calling to evolve.

Through the great Indian Sage Sri Aurobindos magnum opus The Life Divine, she learned that the impulse of evolution, the supramental genius of evolution was arising in evolving humans. At some point, he prophesied, we would become Gnostic Humans, a new species, beyond the animal/ human life cycle.

Evolutionary women often feel we are not getting older but getting newer. Something new is being born in us.

Then came Buckminster Fuller. He told us that Space Ship Earth came without an operating manual, so that we would have to learn how to guide the system. He informed us we have the technology, resources and know-how to make the world work for allif we learned synergy and cooperation.

These four great pioneers, with others, laid the foundation for the Evolutionary movement. She had learned the evolutionary code. Evolution has direction, purpose and intent. The intent is more consciousness, creativity and love by means of ever-greater complexity or synergy.

She discovered that this was her intent. She and the Impulse were one.

She became a conscious Evolutionary Woman!

The next great breakthrough for her emergence was meeting Dr. Jonas Salk in the early sixties. She read something he had written on a Theater of Man, wrote a piece on it and sent it to Jerry Piel, editor of the Scientific American and on Jonass board. Jerry gave it to Jonas, who called Barbara one sunny day in the fall in New England. She had had her fifth child, and was sitting on the lawn with them all in the sun.

The phone rang, Mrs. Hubbard? This is Jonas Salk. The minute she heard his voice she realized something new had happened. Even though she didnt know it then, he was an evolutionary man. It was coded in his voice exciting, inviting, charged with vitality.

He said, Mrs. Hubbard, You have written my vision better than I could have. We are two peas in the same genetic pod. Can I take you to lunch?

She said yes!

He came the next week to drive her from Connecticut to New York. It was a magnificent fall day; the apple orchard sparkled with red and gold, the sun burned warm on the grass. The doorbell rang. Her heart skipped a beat; she opened the door to him. He smiled that incredible magnanimous, sexy smile and said: Mrs. Hubbard, this is the Garden of Eden.

Dr. Salk, she said, Youre right. Im Eve and Im leaving! He looked started. It started her too.

During the ride to New York she told him everything that was wrong with her: Her love of the future, the yearning to do more, the sense of deep vocation, a vital task that she was to perform.

He said, Barbara, this is not what is wrong about you. This is what is right about you. You are a mutant! And I will introduce you to the few others I have been able to find in 25 years. This was the next step in the emergence of an Evolutionary Woman.

She had met another evolutionary being. The Evolutionary Impulse became self aware in her.

He turned up the frequency of the inner code of evolution within her by resonating with it with his own being.

She wrote in her Journal in 1964:

This Christmas of 1964 is the best of my life, not because I have achieved my ideals, but because the problem of identity has disappeared. I can never again say, as I once did, in my own eyes Im nothing, for, as all people are, I, too, am the inheritor of the evolution of the ages. In my genes are the generations. Every cell in my body identifies me with the great and terrible adventure of inanimate to animate to human and every desire of my being sets me passionately to work to further the rise of humanness out of humanity. I am what was and what will be. If I am nothing, life is nothing; that it cannot be and be.

The rise of the Evolutionary Woman is awakened by the incarnation of the Impulse of Evolution as ones own inner drive to become ones unique self.

Your life purpose becomes the unique expression of the irreducibly beautiful impulse of creation as Marc Gafni writes in Becoming Your Unique Self.

With this often comes the disruption of past life pattern of the exclusive role of wife and mother, housekeeper and caretaker. The Evolutionary Woman is not seeking to be equal to men in a dysfunctional world, but to join with men and women to participate in the emerging world.

One day her husband Earl was speaking in a talk she had arranged for him. She stood behind a tree and wept. He came to her and said, Darling, why are you crying?

She dared to say, Earl, I want to speak too! Her heart sank. She knew it would hurt him.

He was crestfallen. Then I cant make you happy. Thats true, she said, No one can make another happy.

She told him she had to go forth and tell the story her own way. He said, Barbara, Im the genius. Youre the editor. She nodded, with tears of love, but there was no going back. They didnt know how to grow the relationship as younger people often do now.

The Evolutionary Woman is not merely a co-equal. She is a co-creator, becoming a new archetype. The Feminine Co-Creator. She is incarnating the impulse of evolution as her own passion to create, motivated by the Creator within her to become a co-creator with the divine. She is moving toward the next stage of human evolution as a conscious co-evolutionary.

Barbara sadly had to ask for a divorce. After loving each other, having the five beautiful children, writing and editing his books, cherishing his paintings and securing a major show at the Gallery of Modern Art, she realized that she had to go forth and tell the story herself.

Lt. Col John J. Whiteside entered her life. He was Chief Officer of Information in New York for the Air Force. He loved the book she edited for Earl called The Search is On and spread it to the news media and the generals of the Air Force. In it he had declared: We are being born as universal humans.

John told her he had been totally committed to covering the Apollo program live, sensing it had great meaning, while others were reporting, as he told her, as if they were telling the story of the birth of the Christ child, as to how much the infant weighed and the labor conditions at the Inn.

John said, Now I know why I wanted it to be covered live. It was a birth!

The Evolutionary Woman becomes aware that we are entering a new stage of evolution, not only personal but collectively.

Barbara was alive with the aspiration of a universal impulse of creation, as though she was being born anew.

John told her that if she attempted to make her husband the spokesperson for her mission, she would fail. So she took the radical step as an Evolutionary Woman to break out totally from the role of wife of and mother.

In 1970, as an Evolutionary Woman, she became a new kind of mother.

She told her 9-year-old son that his mother was a pioneer and that she wanted him to come too. He wrapped his little arms around her and said, We know Mom that you love us. You are doing what mothers are meant to do. You are creating a future for your children. I want to come with you.

And so it was, She and Earl separated. John had told her that if she tried to make Earl the voice for her mission, she would surely fail. That was the key. She could not let that happen.

They were divorced in 1970. She moved her five children to Washington D.C. Her sister lent Barbara her home, the Greystone Mansion in Rock Creek Park, as she and her husband, Wayne Barnet had moved to Stanford University where he was teaching law.

Together John and Barbara founded the Committee for the Future in 1970 to bring positive options for the future into the public arena for decision and action.

One day he took her to meet the head of CBS news.

Tell him the news, he said to Barbara. She said, smiling, knowing how strange it would sound to him: The news is humankind has been born into the universe.

He looked at John as if he were crazy. But then he nodded, Its true, he said, but we cant say it.

Why not, Barbara asked. He shook his head.

Gradually they developed a powerful new global Earth/Space Human Development Goal: New Worlds on Earth, New Worlds in Space, New Worlds in the Human Mind. The idea was that after the lunar landing we should have a social lunar landing, guiding the military/industrial complex toward a new evolutionary goal to restore the Earth, free the people, and explore the infinite regions of spirit and the universe beyond our mother planet, as later written up in her book Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential.

They went to meet with Congressman Olin Teague of the Science and Technology Committee of the US Congress and told him about the new Earth/Space goal. He said ruefully, Barbara, I completely agree with you. But we cant do it in the Congress. There is no way for the various committees to come together to look at any long-range goal. YOU DO IT!

Amazed, John and Barbara considered how to do it. They began to speak of the goal to business leaders, politicians, and space scientists. They all agreed it was good but said the others would not get it. She went to see Mr. Rockwell of Rockwell International in his giant office. Mr. Rockwell, she said, Why dont you call together a design team to design the first Earth/Space Human Development program. He looked stricken. He nodded and said, Barbara I totally agree with you, but I wont do it.

Why not?

Because I would lose our defense contracts.

So that was it.

Evolutionary women do not avoid technology, they attempt to guide it. High Love and High Tech merge for the New Culture of Humanity.

Johns son went to Southern Illinois University.

They were invited to a conference there called Mankind in the Universe. Earl was addressing the student body in the arena, which was like a prize fighting ring with thousands of seats surrounding it. Elegantly dressed he was totally out of phase with the ragged students in long hair and blue jeans. His speech did not go over well. He called for heroism in the age of the anti-hero.

Subsequently, Barbara had spent time in small meetings with students; however, it was a time for the radical rejection of society by students. One of the students raised his hand and asked: Why do you want us to continue 25,000 years of failure?

An older man, a professor, arose in towering wrath directed at this question. You would have kept us in the caves! You wouldnt even have dared step into the light.

Barbara began to say in a gentle way, that man had not failed, that we are a young species at a point of transition. Now it is possible for the first time to overcome those terrible lacks such as poverty and disease. Our new tools might transform the ignorance that has forced us into destructive behavior so that we might become a new species

Each one of us is needed.

The longhaired, blue-jeaned, twenty five year old snickered at her. She stared at him and said, Did I hear you snicker?

He sank into his seat.

How dare you snicker at humankind? How dare you condemn the effort of the past? Do you have any idea of the struggle that went into the development of the human species? Barbara spoke like a mother defending her family.

The Evolutionary woman has faith in the evolution of humanity no matter what a mess we are.

The next morning Professor Tom Turner, director of special projects for Buckminster Fuller asked John and Barbara to sit with him on the stage. In the audience were several hundred people who had attended various sessions of the seminars. Earl was there too. Tom looked like a soft, comfortable dolphin. He said, We would like to make a recommendation that Barbara Marx Hubbard run for the nomination for the presidency of the United States on the Democratic ticket. Her role would be to carry the options for the future into the public arena.

She was stunned; yet amazingly, felt it was a good idea.

The Evolutionary Woman accepts the reality that she is needed for the evolution of the whole culture.

Earl was deeply distressed and said it would kill him if his wife ran for president.

So she did not do it for his sake but felt disappointed.

From the Southern Illinois experiences Barbara and John realized that some new process was needed. Whenever they discussed the idea of New Worlds on Earth, New Worlds in Space, or New Worlds in the Human Mind, a businessman, for example, would say, Yes, I get it but the labor unions wont. Or a politician would get it and say that the public would never accept this new potential.

In a flash of insight John decided to put apparently opposing forces in a wheel to actually experience each other directly. He said you couldnt make progress when one person is the speaker and everyone else is sitting in a row. There needs to be a new social structure, he declared.

He drew a new diagram and put functional areas of any social body in the inner circle of the wheel-like pieces of pie facing each other; sections for production, environment, and government, with a coordinating hub in the center where each sector could match needs and resources.

He added a satellite at the growing edge of the wheel to represent new capacities, as in the biological revolution, the physical sciences, psychologies of growth, and information sciences. Finally, there was a far-out satellite for unexplained phenomenon: the intuitive, mystical, and psychic experiences if the human race.

John decided to put a television in every section, with a central open mission control where everyone could see everything at once. People could begin to see themselves as one living organism. Yes, John told her, We can broadcast the meetings live and call it the New News.

Evolutionary Women are inspired by the male creative genius.

She realized he was giving the people their own nervous system. It was the noosphere getting its collective eyes! They called the conference process SYNCON for synergistic convergence. The purpose was to get the broadest possible cross section of people to form task forces in each sector. Each person or group was asked three questions:

What do you want to create?

What to you need to create it?

What do you want to freely give to others?

Then there is the chance for vocational networking. Vocational arousal occurs. People are excited to help each other. Instead of win/lose conflict, the process changes to how much and with whom can you co-create to get more of what you want. People merge with corollary but apparently conflicting functions, like environment and business, looking for common goals by matching needs with resources.

Finally each sector restates its goals, needs and resources in the light of the potential of the whole system. The students removed the walls between sectors of the wheel. Participants met in an Assembly of the Whole. A sense of social love infused the group. When astronaut Edgar Mitchell came in he said: If there had been a spiritual Geiger counter it would have gone off the charts. We called it The All Walls Down Ceremony.

Barbara realized some new form of self-governing process was being born here. This was the beginning of a more synergistic democracy.

See the article here:
The Autobiography of Barbara Marx Hubbard